This concrete martini glass, tricked out with real fire, flowing water and concrete casino kitsch, was the toast of the Artistry in Decorative Concrete exhibition at the 2012 World of Concrete trade show in Las Vegas.

Carole Vincent lives in Cornwall, England, in a house overlooking the sea. Her father was a concrete contractor and she grew up around the trade, originally working with concrete as a building material and then turning to more artistic uses for her favorite medium.

Weeping walls are a water feature in which the water trickles down the side of a wall, a piece of glass or a similar surface. They can be built inside or outside, but they are becoming more popular in residential homes.

David Seils’ master craft, wall relief sculpture, is an art form that dates back to ancient times, when civilizations carved designs into stone walls, buildings and columns. But instead of chiseling away material, the Asheville, N.C.-based Seils builds up his wall sculptures in layers using mortar, a mason’s hawk and a trowel.

I feel the industry has created a very busy design world. Many times I think people do too much design and they need to simplify things. Many interior designers want simple stain-and-seal floors because they want to focus on the furniture, lights and wall decor.

When Troy Lemon the concrete sculptor met up with Troy Wolfiss the home builder, a fireplace of great proportions ensued. Wolfiss, owner of Artisan Craft Homes, busily designed his new home which would be part of the Home Builders Association of Greater Grand Rapids’ Spring Parade of Homes.

Complex and intricate designs can be applied to concrete surfaces very accurately using adhesive-backed vinyl stencils. They offer control, precision and, if needed, repeatability. Stenciling is a very old technique from the world of paint, but as it evolves in the concrete world, it’s becoming very modern.

When Christina Arnall signed up for Ben Ashby’s advanced countertop class in Las Vegas about four years ago, she had no idea it would lead to an epiphany. It began when Ashby introduced the group to his ½-inch admix being used to create a shower panel and they decided to color it blue.

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, one of the largest children’s museums in the world, debuted a 7,400-square-foot exhibit in 2011 that features a replica of the tomb of ancient Egyptian pharaoh Seti l.

When you have a dark grey slab, you have to take into consideration how that will affect color and its intensity. Most of the colorants on the market differ as much in transparency as concrete differs in color and porosity.

Being in the construction industry his whole life, Dion Battles made the unsurprising leap to decorative concrete, specifically the vertical carving and theming part of the industry, after the nationwide recession hit the residential building industry hard in 2007.

Ellie Ellis of Elite Artistry LLC in Happy Valley, Oregon, and Eva Gallant of Y-Knot Creations LLC in Hurst, Texas, share a bond stronger than the one-ton concrete art piece they produced together in Indianapolis at the Concrete Decor Show.

Situated near Brandenburg Gate on a stretch of land once referred to as the “death strip” where the formidable Berlin Wall once loomed, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was built to commemorate the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide during World War II.